matterA job half doneThe setting up of a Press
Councilof Pakistan involves many controversial issues that prevent
it from becoming fully functional
By Nadeem IqbalIt is over 10 months now that the
Press Councilof Pakistan came
into existence, with the federal government having appointed its first
chairman and around two dozen staff in a rented house in the posh E-7 sector
of capital Islamabad. However, it has not become operational because the
media bodies have not sent their nominees. They demand certain amendments in
the harsh and discretionary clauses of media laws before doing so.

reviewArt of stillnessRuby Chishti's work depicts power and
violence in the form of a social critiqueBy Quddus MirzaLike civil servants, politicians,
postmen and artists, birds are always on the move. If not flying, then
hovering on a branch or searching food on some rooftop, these are constantly
turning their necks, opening their beaks, scratching their feathers, shifting
their feet and jerking their bodies. Little sparrows and black crows in
search of food in human habitats are perpetually alert, because of an
instinctive fear of mankind.

Essence of QawwaliThe present day qawwals are
not very familiar with the text in the classical languages and neither are
the audiences
By Sarwat AliAsif Santo Khan's qawwali
performance held at the Alhamra last week was closer to the traditional
rendering of the form.
The text is of importance in the qawwali and as the form evolved, the
beginning of qawwali recital was the Arabic verses, either from the holy text
or the hadith, followed by Persian poetry, while the major and the bigger
chunk consisted of the last section based on the text in vernacular
languages.

On his recent image building trip to
Europe, President Musharraf peddled the message that any Pakistani who
criticises anything that is happening in Pakistan is basically not patriotic
and a ghadaar.
A manifestation of this thinking was the incident at the Defence institute
RUSI (Royal United Services Institute) when President Musharraf was so
extremely displeased by a question put to him by one of our most respected
and senior journalists, M Ziauddin, Dawn's correspondent in London. Ziauddin
asked the president about the escape from custody of high profile terrorist
Rashid Rauf, in the light of the president's boast that security and
intelligence services in Pakistan had everything quite under control.

matterA job half done

The setting
up of a Press Councilof Pakistan involves many controversial issues that prevent
it from becoming fully functional

By Nadeem
Iqbal

It is over 10 months now
that the Press Councilof
Pakistan came into existence, with the federal government having appointed
its first chairman and around two dozen staff in a rented house in the posh
E-7 sector of capital Islamabad. However, it has not become operational
because the media bodies have not sent their nominees. They demand certain
amendments in the harsh and discretionary clauses of media laws before doing
so.

It was in October 2002 that
the ordinance was promulgated by the president under the then
emergency powers. For over five years, different media bodies have been
reluctant to send their nominees to the government, fearing that the council
will also be misused and curb media freedom.

Not waiting for nominations
from the media, the government not only appointed its chairman but in a
period of less than one year replaced him with another judge. Justice Ejaz
Yousaf has swapped his position with Justice Javed Iqbal as judge of the
Supreme Court belonging to Balochistan.

The law says that the
chairman of the council is to be appointed by the president and should either
be a retired judge of the Supreme Court or qualified to be so. The chairman
is removed only if the council members pass a resolution by two-thirds
majority on the ground of misconduct, incapacity, impropriety or moral
turpitude. Or, the chairman may resign his office by giving notice in writing
to the council. However, the case of Justice Ejaz Yousaf has become a unique
case as he has been removed from the council without following the proper
procedure -- the 19-member council has yet to come into existence. The
council's composition includes four members each from All Pakistan Newspapers
Society (APNS), Council of Pakistan Newspaper Editors (CPNE) and the
professional bodies of journalists. Other members include Vice Chairman
Pakistan Bar Council and two MNAs, one each from treasury and opposition.

Therefore, in his
situation, the president may have very much followed the law by appointing a
chairman for three years' term with a salary, allowances and perquisites
admissible to a judge of the Supreme Court but he can not remove the chairman
at will.

Equally interesting is the
fact that Justice Ejaz Yousaf, who earlier retired as Chief Justice of the
Federal Shariat Court before his appointment on March 3, 2007 as Chairman
Press Council, has not mentioned his around eight month stint in the Press
Council in his profile put on the Supreme Court website. <http://www.
supremecourt.gov.pk//profile-Ejaz.htm>

When an official source was
asked this question by TNS, he said that the question [a blooper one should
say] should better be addressed to the law ministry.

This episode has confirmed
the worst fears of journalist bodies who are questioning if the Press Council
is independent of the government. Mazhar Abbas, Secretary General PFUJ
(Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists) told TNS that the union has been
resisting formation of the Press Council because its laws were not shared
with the PFUJ or working journalists.

"The government",
he said, "has shared the draft law with the newspaper owners in APNS and
CPNE but even they did not nominate their representatives. It's only now that
the information ministry has shared the law with us and asked us to send the
amendments which the PFUJ has prepared and that will be shared with the
government after the elections."

A source closer to Justice
Javed Iqbal confided to TNS that the Chairman is ready to incorporate any
logical amendment proposed by journalists' representatives. The source
further told TNS that after his removal from the Supreme Court he accepted
this post as Chairman Press Council because it did not involve taking oath
under PCO.

President of the CPNE, Syed
Faseih Iqbal, who was involved in the negotiation with the government, told
TNS that APNS and CPNE's stance remains that until the black media laws and
changes made in the laws after Nov 3 emergency are not removed, they are not
going to send their representatives to the council.

He added that as for press
accountability and serving the public need to preserve the rights of the
citizens, the CPNE in October last year had constituted an independent Media
Complaints Commission (MCC) under the chairmanship of Justice (R) Nasir Aslam
Zahid.

In 2002 when the Press
Council Ordinance was promulgated, it was part of three other laws including
a defamation law, procedures for registration of printing presses, newspapers
and news agencies and Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA).

Though a benign law related
only to print journalism, the media bodies have always seen the establishment
of Press Council in the context of other laws and consider it an infringement
on the freedom of expression.

The Council is mandated to
implement, revise, update, enforce the ethical code of practice as given in
the law for the newspapers, news agencies, editors and journalists. On
receiving complaints regarding violations, it will form Inquiry Commissions
comprising three members including a retired High Court Judge or a person
qualified to be a judge of the High Court as Chairman; a nominee of APNS and
another by CPNE. There is no representation of working journalists on the
inquiry commission. The commission will make its recommendations to the
council.

The media bodies'
objections are mainly related to a provision of the ordinance that in case
the council asks the newspaper concerned to issue an apology and it refuses
to tender one, the council will recommend to the competent authority to
suspend publication of the newspaper concerned for a specific period or even
to cancel its declaration.

The media bodies demand
that since this is only a regulatory body, this provision can be neutered
instead by asking other newspapers and news agencies to publish the aggrieved
party's version.

There is also the question
of funding. The ordinance provides for a government grant-in-aid for the
functioning of the Press Council. Even though the APNS and the CPNE had also
made this demand, such a grant-in-aid will make the council appear a
government body and militate against its independent working. It would be
much better if the funding came from the budgetary allocations passed by the
National Assembly, or perhaps, the newspapers could themselves fund the
council. In India, for instance, newspapers finance the press council, each
member's share being in proportion to the circulation certified by the Audit
Bureau of Circulation.

The law also provides that
the council shall also act as a shield for freedom of the press. It may
receive a complaint by a newspaper, a journalist or any institution or
individual concerned with a newspaper against the federal government,
provincial government or any organisation including political parties for
interference in the free functioning of the press.

The code of ethics, which
is part of the Press Council Ordinance, includes references to material
tending to undermine Pakistan's "sovereignty and integrity as an
independent country" or "violative of Article 19 of the
Constitution" (freedom of speech) which are vague, open to the widest
possible interpretation, and obviously need more careful consideration.

reviewArt of stillnessRuby Chishti's work depicts power and
violence in the form of a social critique

By Quddus Mirza

Like civil servants,
politicians, postmen and artists, birds are always on the move. If not
flying, then hovering on a branch or searching food on some rooftop, these
are constantly turning their necks, opening their beaks, scratching their
feathers, shifting their feet and jerking their bodies. Little sparrows and
black crows in search of food in human habitats are perpetually alert,
because of an instinctive fear of mankind.

In that context, Ruby
Chishti's works depicting neatly fabricated crows that appeared solemnly
solid bothered the viewer at an unconscious level. Simultaneously, birds'
dark bodies -- fabricated with
junk materials consisting of old clothes and metal wires and scattered around
the gallery -- suggested a sense of gloom usually associated with crows, the
unwanted creatures. The artist has used these birds as they are traditionally
used -- signs of guests and important news. This concept still prevails
amongst the masses, especially their folk songs and proverbs.

Along with the crows, the
other groups in her exhibition (Ruby Chishti's solo exhibition was held from
Jan 30-Feb 07, 2008 at Canvas Gallery, Karachi) were women, both naked and
covered. On several panels and in the baskets (made of twigs) figures of nude
women (aged and shapeless) and Afghani burqas were composed. Ruby described
the genesis of these works in her experience of looking after her old mother.
The exposure to her withered body, decaying skin and paralysed self was
translated into small figurine constructed with swollen stocking. These
headless and often armless bare torsos communicated an image of female,
devoid of any charm, activity or even life.

Sullen bodies with drooping
flesh were composed in rows or were stacked in the baskets next to burqas --
forms which were enigmatic. In one panel these burqas, of same size but in
different shades, were fixed in straight lines. The idea of repeating one
motif/image was seen in another panel, with the back of girls' heads glued on
the surface. These forms were constructed with fabric and wool of various
colours.

With all her women,
clothed, nude, headless torso and heads with pony tails, the idea of
stillness
emerged in the work of Ruby Chishti. Human figures, made with stockings and
other stuff, represented an aspect of body that is far from being glamorous
or energetic. Though the artist explained her work in line with her
experience of managing her mother, but the work like any interesting art
piece moved beyond its initial/original frame of thought. It conveyed the
status of women in a society, which forces them to either stay indoor, hidden
under covers or treated as mere object of desire.

Thus the nude figures in
Ruby's work defied attraction and presented another reality linked with the
body. This representation of women was not aimed at making them grotesque in
content, but an attempt to showcase the lifeless aspect of a human being.

The works of Ruby, in a
sense trespassed from the state of existence to the stillness of death. The
death was raised in many other ways in several works: The infant with his
umbilical cord ending in a tassel, or a newborn's head and some parts of body
sculpted with layers of sanitary pads. These pieces, along with another
torso, made with the same material and resting a hand on a cow's head
suggested the fascination, fear and the danger of death (Presumably these
ideas must have occupied the artist during her involvement with her ailing
mother).

Torso next to a cow's head
signified a feminist position too, since the animal's head was shaped with
various bras, stretched and sewn together. The fact that faceless nude was
engaged in a gesture of possession (reminiscent of pictures about hunting
expeditions) reflected Ruby's observation of how men consider women and
animals/pets as their personal properties. For them the idea to overpower
them provides a sense of extreme satisfaction, pleasure and pride.

Besides her feminine
approach and feminist position, the idea of violence was dominant in some
other works. Built with threads, rag dolls, plastics, the work on large
fabrics dealt with war, killings and terror in a society. In a piece, the
scenes from a ravished battlefield were recreated with dead figures, bleeding
bodies and torn surfaces with the small shape of a buraq, meticulously
rendered in plastic. In another work a tiny armoured car with a few soldiers
was woven on a huge area of red cloth. The juxtaposition of a military
vehicle with the vastness of red communicated the effects of war and
aftermath of violence.

A soft, docile and peaceful
person, Chishti's work unveiled the presence of power and violence as a
social critique. The work reaffirmed the extended 'role' of violence in our
lives. The growth of this element has affected people in two ways. If they
exist in perpetual fear of dying in a bomb blast, or through bullets fired by
unknown assassins, they are gradually becoming immune to this. And on some
level they have accepted death through violence as one of the natural means
to depart this world.

Seeing the works of Ruby
Chishti in our surroundings (Ruby resides in USA) and contemporary context,
one assumes that soon people will get familiar with the presence of violence
in our society -- as they are becoming used to power breakdown, gaps in gas
supply and disappearance of wheat from their lives.

Essence of Qawwali

The present
day qawwals are not very familiar with the text in the classical languages
and neither are the audiences

By Sarwat
Ali

Asif Santo Khan's qawwali
performance held at the Alhamra last week was closer to the traditional
rendering of the form.

The text is of importance
in the qawwali and as the form evolved, the beginning of qawwali recital
was the Arabic verses, either from the holy text or the hadith, followed by
Persian poetry, while the major and the bigger chunk consisted of the last
section based on the text in vernacular languages.

It is difficult to say how
qawwali as a form of music originated and then urbanised through centuries to
reach us in the 20th and now the 21st century. Most of the professional and
hereditary musicians attribute its origin to the genius of Amir Khusro as a
creative response by a Muslim to the chanting and recitation of the
liturgical texts of the Hindus. It may have been so but the form must have
evolved and taken a number of stylistic shapes. Seven or eight hundred years
is too long a period to assume that the form did not undergo any fundamental
change. It is beyond comprehension but like in the other forms of music the
changes could not be documented as a primary source because music could not
be recorded live. If the form did not change significantly over this period
then it is safer to assume that there was something horribly wrong with
society which had reached a high state of stagnation.

Tracing the steps backwards
to reconstruct the form, probably this music activity must have picked up in
the 12th and 13th and a sizeable body of practitioners must have been
identified with this new genre of singing, closely attached to the shrines of
certain sufi orders like the Chishtia. The shrine must have granted patronage
since there was no other forum where this could be performed with any degree
of regularity. Probably it reached out to a number of people who were moved
by its message, the musical appeal or both.

This sizeable body of
practitioners were called 'qawwal bachcha', those who sang or rendered the
qawwali and were differentiated from other practitioners of music. Those who
were respected and indulged in higher forms of music were probably known as 'kalawants'.
Some of the originators and early performers of the kheyal gaiki are said to
be qawwal bachcha. Probably Bare Muhammed Khan of Rewa who brought in more
flexibility and innovation in the dhrupad by rendering faster passages
commonly known as tans was a 'qawwal bachha'.

When Khurshid Anwar went
about listing the kheyal gharanas in the 1970s for his Ahang e Khusravi he
also included the Qawwal Bachcons Ka Gharana as a kheyal gharana and
identified Chote Ghulam Ali Khan as the representative of that gharana and
included his number.

Some scholars, making a
clear distinction by reason of religion, probably doesn't hold much credence
because of the conversions that were taking place even among the music
practitioners. Tansen, a kalawant, is said to have transformed and his
progeny in vocal and instrumental music proved to be the fountainhead of
music that followed. So many noted musicians and vocalists end by
establishing a connection with the house of Tansen, either through his sons
or his daughters but unfortunately so little is known even about Tansen, the
greatest musician of the last millennium that in the last four centuries it
has not been implausible to separate fact from myth in his case.

It can be assumed that
since qawwali was a form that had a more popular foundation as compared to
the dhrupad, which was performed at the highest forms like the courts the
language was
vernacular. This characteristic probably qawwali shared with the kheyal which
also preferred the vernacular over the more staid expression for the lyrics
of its compositions in the late 18th, 19th and the 20th century.

The present day qawwals are
not very familiar with the text in the classical languages and neither are
the audiences. Once classical languages were part of the daily discourse and
the curriculum of the educated but, in the course of the last century, the
relationship has been disrupted. Now the educated classes are not schooled in
the classics and what the qawwals render is probably understood and
appreciated as part of some glorious tradition or in deference to an
international response. And when the qawwali moves into the languages which
are understood by the local population, the emphasis shifts to text that
borders on the polemical.

The musicians in our
tradition, including the qawwals, have never been very educated in the formal
sense but due to the structure of society and the close knit institutional
setup were educated informally. Somehow they understood the relationship of
the note with the word not as scholars, poets or the critics expected them to
but in its finer musical aspects of tonal nuance and shades. Now that the
institutional setup is not that closely knit and society too is spinning on
more than one pivot the informal input in the education of musicians has
become a trickle. The bond is loosening and threatening the basis of the
assumption on which the entire musical edifice has rested.

Asif Santo Khan is among
the company of qawwals like Rahat Fateh Ali, Rizwan Muazzam, Amjad Sabri who
are tackling the phase after the qawwali as a form had reached great heights
through Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Aziz Mian and Ghulam Fareed Sabri. There is
increased responsibility on them to steady the ship after the great tidal
wave of success.

Only
good news please

Dear
all,

On his recent image
building trip to Europe, President Musharraf peddled the message that any
Pakistani who criticises anything that is happening in Pakistan is basically
not patriotic and a ghadaar.

A manifestation of this
thinking was the incident at the Defence institute RUSI (Royal United
Services Institute) when President Musharraf was so extremely displeased by a
question put to him by one of our most respected and senior journalists, M
Ziauddin, Dawn's correspondent in London. Ziauddin asked the president about
the escape from custody of high profile terrorist Rashid Rauf, in the light
of the president's boast that security and intelligence services in Pakistan
had everything quite under control.

The president was furious.
And he was so furious that a couple of hours later he mentioned the
correspondent when he addressed a gathering of like-minded members of the
Pakistani community at a function organised by the High Commission. He
basically said who needs enemies when we have Pakistanis like this in our
midst. He then told the audience that they needed to 'stop people like this'
and then jokingly remarked that if they thought it appropriate they could
slap him around him as well ("aik do tikka bhi dain").

President's rather unwise
remark was then empathically denied by his robust spokesman General Rashid
Qureshi, but the fact is that it happens to be on record, the president's
speech is on tape. Lawyers and journalists have reacted angrily to a remark
that is really incitement to violence.

But the president seems to
be taking any analysis/criticism of anything that happens in Pakistan as some
sort of personal affront. In a briefing to Pakistani journalists at the tail
end of his eight day tour, he repeated the same message of dishonesty: he
cited the example of 'our neighbouring country' where according to him
poverty was rampant and 'a high percentage of farmers commit suicide because
conditions are so bad' but whose people are fiercely patriotic and don't
criticise their nation. We could have pointed out to him that our
neighbouring country happens to have very strong institutions, the judiciary
is independent and it is billed as the world's largest democracy, so the
comparison is hardly valid. Of course nobody could really point this out as
we were in a controlled briefing of a sarkari nature.

I think part of the problem
is that the president no longer meets any normal people. His world is now the
glittering world of the Islamabad Presidency and the ultra rich interiors of
hotels like the London Dorchester. The closest he probably comes to meeting
any minions is at the annual Christmas lunch at the Sindh Club, and since
that is attended by the super elite of Karachi, you can imagine just how much
distance he has put between himself and the average Pakistani citizen.

So anybody who mentions 'atta
crisis' to the president should expect to be ticked off very, very severely.
He and his colleagues will get back to you with facts and figures: the GDP,
the consumer price index and so on, but be completely oblivious to the
hardships of those desperate people who stand in food lines for hours,
desperate for atta to feed their families.

So this is the new Sarkari
thinking 'Either a Proud Pakistan or a Traitor be'. But this active
discouragement of criticism can be very dangerous. And it is highly
disturbing when you see this philosophy in action and hear it expressed, as I
did recently on none other than the inimitable TV channel, PTV Global. A
bright eyed young lad in a smart suit was hosting an imitation of a current
events show. This desi version ofRobert
Downey Jr, was so highly excitable that he started the show with a news item
on successes in Pak China fighter jet design with the exclamation: "Mr
Pressler WE DID IT!!!!!!!!" and then as explanation mentioned the
infamous Pressler amendment (blocking the sale of US F16s to Pakistan) as
'the Larry amendment' (sic).

The young lad with his
rather sweet American accent and exaggerated desi pronunciation of ethnic
names then proceeded to talk to an 'analyst' about the EU's Javier Solana
telling President Musharraf that the EU would wait andsee what happened in the February elections before deciding a course
of action. "What did Javier Solana mean?" exclaimed our ultra
patriot "Was that a threat?"

And then, to rub in the
general sarkari view of 'enemy Pakistanis in our midst' this patriotic TV
host proceeded to talk to a foreign photojournalist after saying that wasn't
this great and 'no Pakistani photojournalists were interested in taking
photos in their own country'. I found this an ill informed and fairly
insulting remark since in the past few decades we have seen fine work from a
growing number of photo journalists -- Salman Rashid, Nafisa Shah and Zahid
Hussain to mention but a few whose portfolios are so impressive.

So here's my view, formed
after listening to the president's paranoid remarks and current PTV
propaganda: the next big movement is the proud Pakistanis movement -- backed
and funded by the sarkaris. This will build up an army of rabid right wing
'patriots' who will regard critics (lawyers protesting for a free judiciary)
and analysts (journalist and politicians who are able to articulate comments
that are not government propaganda) as THE ENEMY. These people will wave
Pakistani flags and placards with photos of President Musharraf and will
justify everything (beating up protesters, sacking the judiciary, dismissing
an elected government, imposing emergency rule, playing dirty politics) by
saying 'Sab say pehle Pakistan.'